Annie Besant

Annie Besant (1 October 1847-20 September 1933) was a British social reformer, theosophist, and campaigner for the Indian Home Rule movement.

Biography
Annie Besant was born in London, England in 1847, and she was raised an Evangelical Christian. She separated from her clergyman husband in 1873 and joined the National Secular Society a year later, and she began promoting birth control in 1877 before being attracted to socialism during the early 1880s. She became a member of the Fabian Society in 1885, and she also served as a trade union organizer. She was involved in the 1888 match girls' strike, and she became a leading exponent of the religious movement of theosophy (emphasizing an individual spiritual awareness of God), and she went to live in British India. There, she founded what later became the Benares Hindu University of India, and she helped to find the Indian Home Rule movement. She became a hero for the Indian cause when she was interned for three months in 1917, and she was briefly president of the Indian National Congress from 1918 to 1919, publishing a number of books on theosophy. She died in Adyar, Madras Presidency in 1933.